UN Membership for Palestine Now

John Whitbeck

November 15, 2024
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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

On May 10, 2024, the UN General Assembly passed overwhelmingly, with only nine negative votes (Argentina, Czechia, Hungary, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and the United States) a resolution (https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/ltd/n24/129/97/pdf/n2412997.pdf) which “Determinesthat the State of Palestine is qualified for membership in the United Nations and should therefore be admitted to membership in the United Nations” and “Accordingly recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter favorably.”

Early foreign policy appointments, both formally announced and authoritatively rumored, by President-elect Donald Trump make clear that there is absolutely no chance that his incoming administration would permit the Security Council to approve an upgrade in the status of the State of Palestine from observer state to full member state.

In addition, prominent members of the Israeli government, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, are expressing the expectation (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/11/far-right-israeli-minister-orders-preparations-for-west-bank-annexation) that, in 2025, the second Trump administration will bless and recognize Israel’s formal annexation of the West Bank, as the first Trump administration recognized Israel’s formal annexation of occupied East Jerusalem and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, thereby definitively destroying any possibility of Palestinian self-determination and freedom, and Trump has named a public supporter of Israeli annexation of the West Bank as his ambassador to Israel (https://news.antiwar.com/2024/11/12/trump-picks-mike-huckabee-supporter-of-israeli-annexation-as-ambassador-to-israel).

There is, however, one tiny glimmer of hope in this darkness.

On December 23, 2016, after Trump’s first election but before he took office, President Barack Obama instructed his UN ambassador to abstain, and thereby to permit the adoption by a 14-0 vote, in the vote on UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (https://press.un.org/en/2016/sc12657.doc.htm), which reaffirmed that Israel’s establishment of settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, had no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation of international law, and which reiterated the Security Council’s demand that Israel immediately cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.

Obama’s abstention decision constituted an act of insubordination and disobedience which shocked the Israeli government, and it would have been inconceivable at any previous time during his presidency or if Hillary Clinton had been elected to succeed him. One may assume that Obama did not wish virtually has last act as president to be a final demonstration of his contempt for international law and the views and values of the vast majority of mankind.

While Israel could and, unsurprisingly, has ignored UN Security Council Resolution 2334, a UN Security Council resolution approving full UN member state status for the State of Palestine would create a fact that no country could ignore. The occupation of the entire territory of a UN member state by another UN member state, which, in the case of Palestine, the International Court of Justice has recently confirmed (https://www.icj-cij.org/node/204176) is unlawful and must rapidly end, could not be permitted to stand indefinitely or without prompt and significant consequences.

Might Biden, who has been repeatedly humiliated and treated with contempt by Netanyahu notwithstanding his having given Israel everything it has sought, militarily, financially and diplomatically, as it has pursued its genocidal assault against the Palestinian people, follow the Obama precedent and finally assert his personal freedom and independence by instructing his UN ambassador to abstain from a Security Council vote on a new application by the State of Palestine for full UN member state status?

The period between today and January 20 offers the best opportunity for full UN membership which the State of Palestine has ever had, and it may be the last opportunity.

The State of Palestine and its friends throughout the world should try.

John V. Whitbeck is a Paris-based international lawyer.

When Will the General Assembly Suspend Israel?

by Kathy Kelly / November 15th, 2024

The Biblical Book of Job chronicles a string of catastrophes relentlessly plaguing the main character, Job, who loses his prosperity, his home, his health, and his children. Eventually, an agonized Job curses his own existence as well as the god that created him.

Numerous interpretations of the story exist, and more than one version has circulated through the ancient Near East. One version concludes with Job avowing repentance. “I know that my redeemer liveth, and so I repent in dust and in ashes.”

The Latin root for the word ‘repent’ is pensare – to think. ‘Repent” suggests an effort to rethink.

Job’s surprising repentance has been on my mind as calls increase, in 2024, for the United Nations to rethink its relation to Israel as a member state. Increasingly, civil society groups are pressuring Permanent Missions to the UN to eject Israel as a voting member of the General Assembly.

To paraphrase Pankraj Mishra, writing for the New York Review of Books, a stunned world has watched with disbelief as the United States provisions Israel with weapons enabling a mass murder spree across the Middle East.

Palestinians in the West Bank have recently urged all organizations demanding UN compliance with the International Criminal Court ruling of July 2024 to sign a letter available at World BEYOND War which urges Member States of the United Nations General Assembly to fulfill their duties.

Following up on the potential of this letter, a new coalition, “Global Solidarity for Peace in Palestine” has issued a letter to His Excellency Mr. Philemon Yang, the President of the United Nations General Assembly asking him to convene an urgent meeting of the General Assembly to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, establish and secure humanitarian aid corridors and ensure the complete withdrawal of Israel from the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The letter additionally requests:

• The revival of the UN Committee Against Apartheid to address systemic violations of international law and human rights in the OPT.
• Consideration of targeted boycotts, sanctions, and divestments, particularly against illegal operations in the OPT.
• The establishment of an arms embargo on Israel.
• Exploration of suspending Israel from the General Assembly until it complies with international law.

To further support these efforts, the letter calls for the establishment of an unarmed UN peacekeeping mission in the OPT under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to ensure the safety and dignity of all civilians.

In a way, Israel has already removed itself from norms maintained by the UN Charter as it has consistently flouted UN treaties, Resolutions and Advisory opinions. We must not forget that Israel refuses to acknowledge to the UN its possession of nuclear weapons.

I felt startled, during an initial planning call held with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, when one of them spoke of the evacuation he and his family faced, that very day, and said, “We are facing the final solution. Israel is imposing the final solution on us.” Other participants spoke of having shuddered during bombings, day and night.

Journalist Mehdi Hasan,  writes movingly in the Guardian of how absurd it is that the United Nations’ General Assembly agrees to seat Israel as a U.N. member nation.

Israel’s abusive repudiation of the very idea of the United Nations, its escalating and lethal violation of countless international norms, its repeated, lethal attacks on U.N. sanctuaries and peacekeepers justifies its expulsion. Hasan reminds us that Israel’s outgoing Ambassador to the United Nations shredded the UN charter while standing at the General Assembly podium. This is the Charter that declares the UN mission to eradicate the scourge of warfare for future generations.

It is time for the clouds to part above the burning lands of West Asia – for the suffering there to be comforted and their pitiless accusers rebuked by the gathered voice of humanity, by the agent that created Israel and can, when it wishes, “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” The work here is ours, and so let our United Nations demand, and not beg, humanity from Israel and from its imperial sponsor the United States.

• First published at World BEYOND War.Email

Kathy Kelly (kathy.vcnv@gmail.com) is the board president of World BEYOND W (worldbeyondwar.org) and a co-coordinator of the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal. (merchantsofdeath.org). Read other articles by Kathy.

Blinken Atrocious in a Dangerous World

by Binoy Kampmark / November 15th, 2024

It is hard to credit one of the least impressive Secretary of States the United States has ever produced with any merit other than being a plasterwork that, from time to time, moved with caution on the world stage for fear of cracking.  On the stage, Antony Blinken’s brittle performances have been nothing short of unimpressive, notably in pursuing such projects comically titled “Peace in the Middle East.”  Each time he has ventured to various regions of the world, the combatants seem keener than ever to continue taking up arms or indulging in slaughter.

A sense of Blinken’s detachment from the world can be gathered from his Foreign Affairs piece published on October 1, intended as something of a report on the diplomatic achievements of the Biden administration.  It starts off with the sermonising treacle that is all a bit much – the naughty states on the world stage, albeit small in number (Russia, Iran, North Korea and China), “determined to alter the foundational principles of the international system.”

The Biden administration had, in response, “pursued a strategy of renewal, pairing historic investments in competitiveness at home with an intensive diplomatic campaign to revitalize partnerships abroad.”  This served to counter those challengers wishing to “undermine the free, open, secure, and prosperous world that the United States and most countries seek.”  Then comes the remark that should prompt readers to pinch themselves. “The Biden administration’s strategy has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago.”

An odd assessment for various reasons.  There is the continued war in Ukraine and Washington’s refusal to encourage any meaningful talks between Kiev and Moscow, preferring, instead, the continued supply of weapons to an attritive conflict of slaughter and such acts of industrial terrorism as the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline.

There has been the relentless watering down of the “One China” understanding over the status of Taiwan, along with continued provocations against Beijing through the offensive pact of AUKUS with Australia and the UK.  That particularly odious pact has served to turn Australia into a US military garrison without the consent of its citizens, an outcome sold to the dunces in Canberra as utterly necessary to arrest the rise of China.  Along the way, an arms buildup in the Indo- and Asia-Pacific has been encouraged.

With such a view of the world, it’s little wonder how blind Blinken, and other members of the Biden administration, have been to Israel’s own rogue efforts at breaking and altering the international system, committing, along the way, a goodly number of atrocities that have seen it taken to the International Court of Justice by South Africa for committing alleged acts of genocide.

Through his various sojourns, the point was always clear.  Israel was to be mildly rebuked, if at all, while Hamas was to be given the full chastising treatment as killers without a cause.  When the barbarians revolt against their imperial governors, they are to be both feared and reviled.  In June this year, for instance, Blinken stated on one of his countless missions for a non-existent peace that Hamas was “the only obstacle” to a ceasefire, a markedly jaundiced explanation given the broader programs and objects being pursued by the Israeli Defence Forces.  Hamas has been accused of being absolutist in its goals, but one can hardly exempt Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the charge.  Not for Blinken: “I think it is clear to everyone around the world, that it’s on them [Hamas] and that they will have made a choice to continue a war that they started.”

On the issue of aid to Gaza’s strangled, dying population, Blinken has been, along with his equally ineffectual colleague in the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, cringingly ineffective.  Their October 13 letter sent to their Israeli counterparts made mention of several demands, including the entry of some 350 aid trucks into Gaza on a daily basis, and refraining from adopting laws, now in place, banning the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).  Each demand has been swatted back with a school child’s snotty petulance, and aid continues being blocked to various parts of Gaza.

On October 24, Americans for Justice in Palestine Action (AJP Action) “urgently” called on the Secretary of State “to stop wasting his time with failed diplomatic visits and to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon.”  Those at AJP Action must surely have realised by now that Blinken would be utterly rudderless without those failed visits.  Indeed, Osama Abu Irshaid, Executive Director of the organisation, went so far as to say that “Blinken’s diplomatic theatre is enabling Netanyahu’s war crimes.”  To arm and fund Israel “while requesting a ceasefire” was a policy both “hypocritical and ineffective.”  Such is the nature of that sort of theatre.

In the meantime, the tectonic plates of international relations are moving in other directions, a point that has been aided, not hindered, by the policy of this administration.  Through BRICS and other satellite fora, the United States is finding itself gradually outpaced and isolated, even as it continues to hide behind the slogan of an international rules-based order it did so much to create.  This is not to say that the US imperium has quite reached its terminus.  If anything, the Biden administration, through the good offices of Blinken, continues to insist on its vitality.  But US hegemony long left unchallenged is, most certainly, at an end.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

Protesters storm parliament in Georgia separatist region Abkhazia over deal with Russia


Protesters stormed the parliament of Georgia's Russia-backed breakaway region of Abkhazia on Friday while the government was set to discuss a real-estate investment agreement with Russia. Some Abkhaz fear the deal would price them out of the property market and boost Moscow's control in the region.


Issued on: 15/11/2024 

Protesters rally outside the parliament building in Sukhumi (Sukhum), the capital of Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia, on November 15, 2024. 

© DNA News Abkhazia, Reuters

Protestors stormed the regional parliament in Abkhazia on Friday, forcing the government to halt an investment deal with Russia that some fear will spoil the breakaway Georgian region's natural beauty.

The Black Sea separatist region is backed by Moscow but recognised as part of Georgia by most of the world.

It has been thrust into turmoil over concerns that a proposed investment deal with Russia could see apartment complexes mushroom in a region famed for its natural beauty and beaches.

Russian news agencies posted videos showing hundreds of demonstrators barging into the regional parliament on Friday, where lawmakers had gathered to discuss ratifying the treaty.

The state-run TASS news agency said protesters also took control of the presidential adminstration building, adjoining parliament.

Amid the unrest, the president of Abkhazia announced plans to halt the treaty.

"The presidential administration is preparing a document to withdraw from parliament the draft law" on ratification, its press service said on Telegram.

"The decision has been taken with the goal of stabilising the situation in the republic."

Police had earlier fired tear gas on protesters, who had rammed through the gates of the parliament complex using a truck and threw eggs and plastic bottles at the police, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Moscow on Friday expressed "concern" over the protests, urged Russians not to visit Abkhazia and said those there should consider leaving.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Abkhazia's opposition of "provoking an escalation of the conflict," and said the "crisis situation" was "hampering the development of Abkhazia".

Following a short war with Georgia in 2008, Russia recognised both Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries and has maintained a military presence there.

Local concerns over construction and foreign land ownership in the region, which has a population of some 240,000, run high.

The region's parliament earlier this year dropped a bill that would have partially reversed an official ban on non-residents building and buying property after public outcry.

Protesters had earlier this week blocked roads and bridges in Abkhazia after authorities briefly detained opposition activists opposing the deal with Russia.

The Georgian government in Tbilisi has not commented on the protests.

(AFP)

Prosecutors demand jail time, ban on public office for Le Pen over embezzlement charges

Agence France-Presse
November 15, 2024

Marine Le Pen 

French prosecutors demanded Wednesday that far-right leader Marine Le Pen receive a jail sentence and be banned from public office for five years over charges she embezzled European Parliament funds.

The prosecution made the request in a Paris court where Le Pen and other defendants from her National Rally party are on trial accused of creating fake jobs at the EU parliament. She denies the charges.

If granted by the court, the ban would exclude the 56-year-old from running in France's 2027 presidential election.

The prosecution demanded the ban be effective immediately, even if the defense team appeals. The National Rally, like other far-right parties around Europe, is riding high following a strong performance in European elections in June.

The prosecution demanded that all of the two dozen defendants be excluded from running from public office.

It demanded a five-year jail sentence for Le Pen, calling for at least two years of that to be a "convertible" custodial sentence, meaning there would be a possibility of partial release.

The prosecutors also demanded the RN be fined two million euros ($2.1 million).

Le Pen promptly denounced the prosecutors' motion as excessive, branding it an "outrage" and accusing prosecutors of trying to "ruin the (RN) party".

"I think the prosecutors' wish is to deprive the French people of the ability to vote for who they want," she said.


The alleged fake jobs system, which was first flagged in 2015, covers parliamentary assistant contracts between 2004 and 2016.

Prosecutors say the assistants worked exclusively for the party outside parliament.

Addressing the trial last month, Le Pen said she was innocent.


"I have absolutely no sense of having committed the slightest irregularity, or the slightest illegal act," she told the court.

(AFP)

As planet heads toward 2.7°C rise, tracker warns global climate action has 'flatlined'

Olivia Rosane, Common Dreams
November 14, 2024 

Earth melting (Shutterstock)

Existing policies and actions taken by world governments put the world on track for a median estimate of 2.7°C of warming by the end of the century, Climate Action Tracker revealed on Thursday at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.

If global leaders make no further effort to reduce emissions, temperatures have a 33% chance of spiking past 3°C of warming by 2100 and a 10% chance of overtaking 3.6°C, which report lead author Sofia Gonzales-Zuniga called "an absolutely catastrophic level of warming."

"The combined global effect of government action on climate change has flatlined over the last three years, underscoring a critical disconnect between the reality of climate change and the lack of urgency on policies to cut emissions," Climate Action Tracker (CAT) announced during its annual update at 

The report attributes the lack of progress to the fact that few governments announced new climate targets in 2024 while they continued to facilitate the increased burning of fossil fuels, despite the pledge made at last year's COP28 to transition away from oil, gas, and coal.

It comes on the heels of a series of reports released ahead of or during COP29 that paint a consistent picture of escalating greenhouse gas emissions and climate extremes paired with government inaction. The U.N. Emissions Gap Report, published in late October, projected that the world was on track for 3.1°C of warming based on current policies. The World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, also published last month, found that all three main greenhouse gases reached record atmospheric levels in 2023.

"The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked."

2023 was also the hottest year on record, but the WMO's State of the Climate 2024 update for COP29 warned that 2024 was likely to surpass it. Further, global temperatures from January to September averaged 1.54°C above preindustrial levels, temporarily surpassing the 1.5°C warming limit enshrined in the Paris agreement.

"The record-breaking rainfall and flooding, rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones, deadly heat, relentless drought, and raging wildfires that we have seen in different parts of the world this year are unfortunately our new reality and a foretaste of our future," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement. "We urgently need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen our monitoring and understanding of our changing climate."

Yet this is precisely what is not happening: Another study from the Global Carbon Budget released on Wednesday projected that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels would increase by 0.8% from 2023 to reach 37.4 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent, a record high.

"The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked," study leader Pierre Friedlingstein, a professor at Exeter's Global Systems Institute, said in a statement. "Time is running out to meet the Paris agreement goals—and world leaders meeting at COP29 must bring about rapid and deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions to give us a chance of staying well below 2°C warming above preindustrial levels."

The Climate Action Tracker report adds to these findings, concluding that while renewables have surged in recent years, continued reliance on fossil fuels have undermined that progress. While clean energy like wind and solar and clean transit like electric vehicles now receive double the investments of oil, gas, and coal, funding for the latter still ballooned by a factor of four between 2021 and 2022 while fossil fuel subsidies are at a record high.




"We are clearly failing to bend the curve," Gonzales-Zuniga said. "As the world edges closer to these dangerous climate thresholds, the need for immediate, stronger action to reverse this trend becomes ever more urgent."

CAT called on the world's largest emitters to lead the way. It recommended 1.5°C-aligned 2035 targets for the world's seven biggest climate polluters—China, the U.S., India, the E.U., Indonesia, Japan, and Australia—as well as the "troika" countries of Brazil, UAE, and Azerbaijan. To bring its policies in line with the 1.5°C goal, the U.S. would have to cut its total emissions (including from land-use and forests) by 65% of 2005 levels by 2030 and 80% by 2035.

This is unlikely to happen under the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to "drill, baby, drill" as soon as he retakes the White House in January. CAT concluded that Trump's promised energy policies would raise its projection for 2100 temperatures based on current actions by 0.04°C. However, if the U.S. permanently axes its net-zero goals, and if other countries decide to follow Trump's lead, that temperature increase could be higher.

"Clearly, we won't know the full impact of the U.S. elections until President-elect Trump takes office, but there is a clean energy momentum in the U.S. now that will be difficult to stop," Bill Hare, the CEO of Climate Analytics, said in a statement. "While the Trump administration will undoubtedly do its best to throw a wrecking ball into climate action, the clean energy momentum created by President [Joe] Biden, being actioned across the country, is likely to continue at significant scale."

"The key issue is whether countries stick together and continue to move forward with action," Hare concluded. "A Trump rollback of U.S. policies, as damaging as it is, can be overcome."

Methane, a climate time bomb: On the trail of leaks in Romania

REPORTERS © FRANCE 24
Issued on: 15/11/2024 - 

Nearly three years after more than 100 countries promised to tame methane emissions, the indiscriminate leakage of this powerful greenhouse gas is still rampant. As world leaders convene in Azerbaijan for the COP29 climate summit, FRANCE 24's reporters follow the trail of methane leaks in Romania, home to one of Europe's largest oil reserves.

When we think of the climate crisis, carbon dioxide usually comes to mind. However, methane is not only the second-largest contributor to global warming, it's also 84 times more potent than CO2.

At the COP26 summit in 2021, nearly 100 countries signed on to the Global Methane Pledge, promising to limit emissions by 30 percent by 2030 compared to 2020 levels. Nearly 160 countries have since joined the movement, but have they kept their promise?

Clean Air Task Force was one of the first non-profits to put the spotlight on a common yet devastating practice: methane deliberately vented from fossil fuel facilities. FRANCE 24's reporters joined a team of so-called “methane hunters” on a mission in Romania, where the NGO has reported high emissions escaping from oil fields.

Thanks to a new EU regulation set to come into force in May 2025, it will soon be harder for leaks to go unpunished. Companies will be forced to monitor and limit their emissions or face penalties. So far, industry initiatives in Romania remain limited – the country is home to ageing infrastructure prone to leaks – but the work of activists is beginning to pay off.

12:42

'Karmic Justice': The Onion's owner takes victory lap after acquiring Infowars

Matthew Chapman

RAW STORY
November 14, 2024 


After the satirical publication The Onion acquired all the assets and intellectual property of far-right webcaster Alex Jones' Infowars platform, CNN's Jake Tapper sat down on Wednesday with Ben Collins, who runs the Onion's parent company Global Tetrahedron, and John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, to get their thoughts on the matter.

Jones was forced to liquidate his assets to help pay off a $1.5 billion judgment against him won by the families who lost their children in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, which Jones repeatedly claimed was a false flag staged by the government with child actors. The conspiracy theorist incited his supporters to harass the victims' families for years, and those families ultimately gave The Onion backing to purchase Infowars' assets at auction.

"What is it like for you, as somebody who used to fight disinformation?" Tapper asked Collins, who worked for NBC before acquiring The Onion.

"It obviously — it feels good," said Collins. "But I think in general, people need a little hope right now. People need the idea that a good thing can happen. Alex has made — and people like him, the general ecosystem he created — have made it so the families in these situations don't even appear to be anything other than characters in his universe. What is great about this, the families, we are human beings. We have senses of humor. This is a big cosmic joke to play on Alex Jones and the whole world. The Onion, which is known for making fun of everybody, has purchased Infowars from him at a Storage Wars-style auction. It feels good. Hopefully, if you are a Sandy Hook family right now, there is a cosmic justice happening. That's why we did this. We want people to feel at home. We want people to think that a good thing can happen."

"John, the acquisition could be symbolic for the families," said Tapper. "Are you concerned that Alex Jones will find and make a new platform?"

"Look, I think that what our job is right now, the one right in front of us, to fight fear and fight misinformation," said Feinblatt. "And by writing the new chapter at Infowars, that is what we are doing. As you say, that is poetic justice and karmic justice."

"Thanks to you and congratulations," said Tapper. "And most important, congratulations to the Sandy Hook families, for this moment of justice in the dark world."

Watch the video below or at the link here.

Marjorie Taylor Greene: Matt Gaetz will prosecute vaccine 'crimes against humanity'

NUTBAR TRIFECTA; MTG, RFK Jr., MG

David Edwards
November 14, 2024 

Marjorie Taylor Greene (House Oversight Committee/screen grab)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) predicted that former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) would prosecute vaccine-related "crimes against humanity" if he becomes President-elect Donald Trump's next attorney general.

During a House Oversight Committee hearing on pandemic preparedness on Thursday, Greene accused the federal government of using "the American people's hard-earned tax dollars to create viruses that can be unleashed on the world like COVID-19 was."

"Dr. [Anthony] Fauci lied to the American people, abusing his power and position and role, a very powerful role paid for by the American tax people," she said. "He lied, and many, many people died.

"Now vaccines have been mandated on the population in order to work, go to school, and live as functioning citizens in the United States," she continued. "I can tell you when you talk about vaccine hesitancy, as one sitting before you that never took the COVID vaccine, nor will I take it, thank God. I'm so glad I didn't take it."

Greene falsely suggested other vaccines were linked to "the rise of autism, learning disabilities, neurological problems, and so much more that children are suffering from today."

"Preparing for the next pandemic is actually recognizing that the last pandemic resulted in crimes against humanity," the lawmaker opined.

"People that perpetuated and continue to perpetuate these crimes need to be prosecuted, and that needs to be starting in the next administration, and I'm pretty sure our next attorney general will do that, and I look forward to seeing that happen," she added.

Watch the video below from the House Oversight Committee.

A second reign of terror: Inside Trump’s blueprint for home raids

Thom Hartmann, AlterNet
November 15, 2024 

Stephen Miller, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner listen as Donald Trump speaks onstage following early results from the 2024 U.S. presidential election in Palm Beach County Convention Center, in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., November 6, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

When Trump was elected, many Americans wondered if we were in for a brutal nationwide reign of terror, or if he’d merely content himself with more tax cuts for billionaires and a repeat of his last term’s personally profitable crony capitalism.

While the mainstream media has treated him (for years) as if he’s just another, albeit quirky, politician, others among us, as Carole Cadwalladr noted at The Power, remember that, when Rodrigo Duterte was elected president of the Philippines (whose constitution is modeled after ours), within a mere 6 months he was imprisoning opposition politicians, protesters, and journalists.

Taking down the free press in Germany and imprisoning dissidents and journalists took Hitler only three months, about the same as Mussolini and Pinochet.


America’s right-wing oligarchs are apparently ready for the fun to begin: Elon Musk tweeted last week that it’ll soon be time to use the force of law and the Department of Justice to prosecute the people at The Center for Countering Digital Hatewho’ve been relentless in outing Nazis on Xitter. (Musk just lost a lawsuit to them.)

But even though they moved quickly, Hitler, Pinochet, Mussolini, and Duterte didn’t start with journalists; they started with the most marginalized and least powerful people in their nations. For Hitler it was trans people he went after within his first two weeks; for Duterte it was drug addicts.

Pinochet and Mussolini arrested vulnerable working class supporters of their opposition political parties who dared show up in the streets to demonstrate against them.


So, who’s the weakest here in America? While Trump campaigned against trans people (just like Hitler had in 1933), it looks like he has another group in mind for his first genocide.

Trump has his sights on undocumented Black and Hispanic migrants to begin the state-sponsored violence and inure the American public to what will eventually come for many more of us.

Get ready for midnight doorknocks by men with guns starting in January. Particularly if you or anybody in your extended family has a last name that ends with a vowel or a z, or even if you simply have black hair and brown eyes.


Trump and Thomas Homan are on the case.

Homan notoriously ran ICE during the last Trump administration and is often considered, along with Stephen Miller, as the father of Trump’s brutal child-separation policy that traumatized so many thousands of young families and has left about 1,000 youngsters trafficked into pop-up “Christian” adoption services missing to this day.

Alone. Frightened. Not knowing where their parents are or if they’ll ever see them again.


Homan also helped write part of the immigration policies for Project 2025 - and famously bragged to CBS that if he found families with “illegal” members in this country, he’d simply deport the entire family, US citizens or not.

When asked by Cecilia Vega on 60 Minutes, “Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?” Homan barely took a breath before asserting, “Of course there is. Families can be deported together.”

America has done this before, and the results were ugly.


In the 1920s, Republican President Herbert Hoover initiated a nationwide roundup and deportation of people of mostly Mexican ancestry. Police and border agents simply went house-to-house in Hispanic neighborhoods from Arizona to Alaska, often kicking in doors and dragging out people who couldn’t immediately prove their citizenship. As many as 2 million people with Hispanic last names were arrested.

As a result, an estimated 40% to 60% of the people arrested, detained, and deported were actually US citizens by virtue of their birth on US soil. Because they were deported without proof of citizenship (often because of home births without hospital records), however, they were never able to return to the US.

During WWII, American employers encouraged Mexicans to come to the US to fill jobs vacated by US citizens who’d been drafted and sent off to war.


After the war, President Eisenhower launched Operation Wetback and essentially replicated Hoover’s program; an estimated 300,000 to 1.1 million people were similarly dragged from their homes. Nobody is certain how many were US citizens, but estimates range from 30% to as many as 60%.

Again, because they weren’t able to instantly prove citizenship when the police arrived at their homes, they had no way to get back into the US once they were dumped in Mexico.

If Trump’s leading candidate for Attorney General, Mike Davis, assumes that role he’ll almost certainly back up Holman’s efforts, even if millions of US citizens are seized, imprisoned, and deported. He’s the guy, after all, who just tweeted:

“Fuck unity. We have the votes. And they tried to kill Trump.” And “Here’s my current mood: I want to drag their dead political bodies through the streets, burn them, and throw them off the wall. (Legally, politically, and financially, of course.)”

The fact that Trump and the people around him are giddy about going after Hispanics and other Black and Brown immigrants from “shithole countries” answers the question everybody is asking about how brutal his second administration could become.

It’s going to be rough. Get ready.

Stephen Miller has already said he’s gleefully going to try to undo the citizenship of naturalized US citizens (presumably not the Norwegians, though) so he can throw them into the concentration camps along with the “illegals”:

And if you you’re a natural born citizen with an Hispanic last name or live anywhere near Hispanics and have black hair and brown eyes, be sure to get your proof of citizenship ready and carry it with you at all times, even when you sleep.

And the rest of us? No dictator in history has ever started a violent inquisition attacking the weakest in society — and they all begin there — without soon extending his terror against every person he thought opposed him or who represented a challenge to his power.

The smug media idiots who’ve been sanewashing Trump for yearswill either roll over (as has already begun) or end up in jail themselves, along with many of us on Substack and in the progressive press.

As JD Vance recently said, implying the thought and speech police will soon be coming for Trump’s critics:
“You cannot lie, take your position of public trust, and lie to the American people for political purposes. It’s disgraceful. And people have to suffer consequences for it.”

Welcome to Trump’s version of hell. And welcome to the resistance.